"In this concise, engaging book, Foster (Sex and the Eighteenth-Century Man) explores the intimate lives of six Founding Fathers, and, more importantly, the way their sex lives have been presented and analyzed over the years. Focusing on George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and the oft-forgotten Gouverneur Morris, Foster deftly demonstrates the ways these men’s private lives have been essentially rewritten to present the normative, virtuous, and manly Founders Americans choose to believe in. Drawing primarily from popular biographies, from the colonial era through present day, the book explores the ways biographers present their subjects in response to the times: strict Victorian morals, Freudian psychoanalysis, and contemporary attempts to embrace, rather than hide, all aspects of their lives. Foster addresses the glossing over of Washington’s lack of children (perhaps he was sterile, but god forbid he was impotent), the refashioning of Franklin’s Parisian affairs as the “harmless” pleasures of a “foxy grandpa,” and the romanticized marriage of John and Abigail Adams—the “Romeo and Juliet of the American Revolution”. Proving that you can’t trust biographers, Foster ably reveals that sex has always factored into national identity and that the Founders were flesh-and-blood men, unable to support idealistic American standards of morality."--Publishers Weekly
"Sex and the Founding Fathers is a must read for all who are interested in the founding era and the historiography of the period."
—Annette Gordon-Reed, author of The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family
"Foster tells us that each new generation has inquired into the intimate lives of great men and found reflections of its own habits and desires and anxieties....Using the methods of intellectual and cultural history, Foster examines contemporary and scholarly interpretations of the sex lives of George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, Benjamin Franklin, Alexander Hamilton, and Gouvernor Morris. Foster holds that we read and write about our Founding Fathers’ intimate habits because we want these icons of masculinity to be relatable. Foster is right; we do seek ourselves in our histories."—Journal of American History